Presidential Candidate Chmelar Urges Fair Election Campaigning

Bratislava, February 4 (TASR) – Independent presidential candidate Eduard Chmelar has called on the media and his competitors to engage in a fair election campaign, as he’s under the impression that this isn’t the case at the moment.

For one thing, Chmelar thinks that Parliamentary Chair Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS) has written off half of the hopefuls from the presidential race.

“We’re being purposefully ignored, underestimated, and facing manipulation that adversely affects the behaviour of voters. Some dailies and organisations are even picking candidates for debates based on a weird subjective pattern; they decide who’s relevant and attention-worthy in an arbitrary manner on their own,” stated Chmelar, who urged the media to give equal time to all candidates.

Chmelar pointed out that the fundamental characteristic of a democratic election is that it should be free and fair. He finds it “unacceptable” that only three centre-right hopefuls are being portrayed as the whole democratic spectrum by the media. “It’s unacceptable to have one of the candidates invited to debate four, five or even seven times under the pretext of some expert-related issue during campaigning, whereas another hasn’t been [invited] even once because we’re all equal in this period – there are no MPs, European commissioners or former ministers now, only candidates,” he underlined.

Chmelar also urged the other candidates to “display a sense of fair play” and join him in his initiative.